Lattice simulations can play an important role in the study of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking by providing quantitative results on the nonperturbative dynamics of candidate theories. For this programme to succeed, it is crucial to identify the questions that are relevant for phenomenology, and develop the tools that will provide robust answers to these questions. The existence of a conformal window for nonsupersymmetric gauge theories, and its characterization, is one of the phenomenologically important problems that can be studied on the lattice. We summarize the recent results from studies of IR fixed points by numerical simulations, discuss their current limitations, and analyze the future perspectives.